Track & Trace

When thinking of traceability in the pharma industry, most of you will immediately think of serialization regulations, such as the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) or the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD), which mandate the use of 2D matrix codes to be applied to each individual pack of pharmaceuticals (among other obligations). However, there is also room for traceability to be used in other ways to benefit pharmaceutical manufacturers. For example, applying unique product identifiers to glass containers could help prevent mix ups and allow manufacturers greater visibility into where problems are occurring in the fill and finish process.

Vous avez peut-être déjà vu une initiative similaire dans certains centres commerciaux. Depuis quelques années déjà, il est possible d’échanger ses bouteilles plastiques contre des bons d’achats, dont le montant s’adapte au nombre de bouteilles que vous donnez. Eh bien dans le cadre de la promotion d’un modèle de Stan Smith (en partie conçu à partir du recyclage de plastique recyclé), Adidas vient d’installer ce type de machines dans deux Flagship, à New York et à Paris. L’occasion pour les fans de la marque de vider leur sac de bouteilles pour obtenir un bon de réduction avantageux.

A letter of endorsement has been signed by national glass associations and ‘Furnace for the Future’ (F4F) founding members for the project set up by FEVE. The project brings together 19 European container glass manufacturers including Ardagh Group, Vidrala and O-I to build the world’s first large-scale hybrid electric furnace to run on 80% green electricity. Ardagh Group will build the F4F and run it in Obernkirchen, Lower Saxony, Germany.

When medical mix-ups happen, you have a good reason to panic. Will you suffer terrible side effects? Will your body reject the unknown medicine? Will your foot fall off? Alright, so maybe that last one is a little off the charts, but your mind veers off to rocky places when something's injected into our body that's not meant to be there.

In Mexico, approximately 80 people had already received the bogus jab from a clinic, whereas no one had yet been inoculated with the fake doses in Poland, per The Wall Street Journal's report.
Pfizer ran tests on the doses that had been seized by authorities in both countries, confirming this week that they were fake, as well as most likely physically harmless. However, more harm could be done by people believing they were inoculated and potentially spreading, or catching, the virus.

The major factors driving the growth of Track and Trace Solutions Market include the stringent regulations & standards for the implementation of serialization, increasing focus of manufacturers on brand protection, growth in the number of packaging-related product recalls, and growth in the medical device industry.
The study involved the extensive use of both primary and secondary sources. The research process involved the study of various factors affecting the industry to identify the segmentation types, industry trends, key players, competitive landscape, competitive leadership mapping, key market dynamics, and key player strategies.

Serialization of glass products enables the quality management, tracking some possible forming defaults or retrieving defective products from the market in financially limited but secured quantities. Lasers are used to manage returnable bottles, prevent parallel trading and counterfeiting, or communicate with the end users (Personalized Marketing) through Smartphones Data Matrix reading apps.

Personalization is everywhere in customer experience.
Customers crave brands and products that understand their needs and are made just for them. Investing in personalization efforts can pay off big for brands and drive revenue growth of 10-30%. An overwhelming 70% of consumers say they will shop exclusively with brands that personally understand them.
Personalization takes on many forms, from creating made-to-order products to leveraging AI and technology and offering strong in-store personal relationships.

Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for the packaging sector. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising Track & Trace startups.

Advancements in technology are being tested and adopted by retail and consumer brand businesses at a pace unlike any other in history. Those who embrace technology’s potential see tools enabling them to increasingly anticipate and meet future change from a position of relative strength. The shock that hit retail last year when the novel coronavirus pandemic spread across the U.S. and the world has borne out this hypothesis in practice.

The Global Startup Heat Map below reveals the distribution of the 334 exemplary startups & scaleups we analyzed for this research. Further, it highlights 5 Internet of Things startups that we hand-picked based on criteria such as founding year, location, funding raised, and more. You get to explore the solutions of these 5 startups & scaleups in this report. For insights on the other 329 IoT solutions, get in touch.

A-S Medication Solutions is recalling 198,350 bottles of extra-strength acetaminophen tablets after bottles were found to include an incomplete prescription drug label, rather than the required over-the-counter drug facts sheet.
The 500 mg tablets were distributed in 100-count bottles by Humana in a Health Essentials kit, which also included products like hand sanitizer, face masks and cough drops, A-S said in a notice posted on the FDA's website.

Pour mémoire, XTag est un système de détection des allergènes qui exploite le potentiel du GS1 Digital Link : l'utilisateur peut créer son profil en indiquant les substances auxquelles il réagit parmi les allergènes reconnus. Ce profil, confidentiel, est stocké sur support à travers un code QR code à deux dimensions ou sur une puce répondant au profil de communication en champs proche (NFC). Ce profil personnalisé étant croisé avec la liste des ingrédients d’un produit, le consommateur obtient immédiatement une alerte. En capitalisant sur l’existant, soit le Datamatrix, GS1 Digital Link permet d’envisager une dématérialisation de la notice imprimée au format dit « Electronic Product Information » (Epi) et de délivrer des informations avec un assistant vocal.

The modern facility of Phytopharm reaches its high-volume production goals by introducing high levels of process automation on a plant level involving innovative software technologies and the most advanced equipment available. To become compliant with the most complex Track & Trace requirements so far (the Russian regulations), Phtyopharm Klęka S.A. equips its production with a fully automated packaging line with Track & Trace solution by Romaco and SoftGroup – a winning combination between high-efficient hardware and highly reliable software.

Pharmaceutical producers can now utilize flexible automation system builds with pre-structured engineering design scenarios based on whether legacy equipment will be repurposed or new equipment installed. The typical automation scenarios, based on standardized GAMP5 Model definitions, include:

• SCADA with manual data entry and manually-driven control
• SCADA over process skids that require manual and/or automated controls
• DCS with new process skids
• DCS a with mix of new and repurposed units

“While the product names were correctly printed on the back of the blister sheet, the tablets and the blisters are a similar size, shape and colour, which increases the risk of inadvertently taking the wrong medicine,” they said. “As a precautionary measure to mitigate against the risk of accidental overdose, the quarantine action for BN:CW612 was then escalated to a consumer level.”

Bridgewater, NJ, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, Inc is voluntarily recalling one lot of Telmisartan Tablets, USP, 20 mg, packaged in 30-count bottles, Lot No. 1905005661 to the consumer level. The product is being recalled due to a market complaint received which stated that one bottle labelled as 30-count Telmisartan Tablets, USP, 20 mg incorrectly contained 30 tablets of Telmisartan Tablets, USP, 40mg.

Do you wish the data across your pharma serialization lines was more accessible? As someone who has worked in enterprise software for a long time, the “disconnected” nature of packaging line data is pretty incredible. Using Systech as an example, we may see network connectivity from enterprise systems to Level 3 Guardian, but rarely visibility to Level 2 Advisor and Level 1 Sentri.

Maintaining end-to-end pharma supply chain integrity is critical to mitigate risks within the pharma-logistics cold chain and better ensure the safe and secure transportation of health-giving and life-saving pharmaceutical products. Transparency of the status of the shipment is an increasing demand from the lane owners for pharmaceutical shipments. Transparency of location, transparency of temperature history and transparency of circumstance of each access to the payload space are all of great interest.

Swiss milk processor, Emmi alongside Tetra Pak has partnered with creative technology studio, Appetite Creative, to promote the launch of two new products, Oat Milk Drink and Balance Drink, via interactive digital advertising and connected packaging. Here, Tetra Pak and Appetite Creative share their views on developments in connected packaging as well as opportunities for brands.

Smart packaging is an excellent way business owners can prove their brand’s authenticity, establish consumer trust and encourage better consumer engagement by eliminating all the doubts, perhaps even suspicions about its authenticity. It is mainly divided into two types; active and intelligent packaging.